Straw men in South Park fandom

[sekrit_omg]

There was some arguing on Tumblr and you know me, I love arguing. It's a long thread, or whatever, so start here and read back. A lot of people there have covered all the points I would make really well, but formerdinosaur mentioned that she is sick of seeing the conversation about bottoming and characters who are depicted as bottoming. She's right, it's an old

Comments

[_confunded_]

Yeah, reading this I can see some problematic parts of my response to those posts. I kind of (definitely) lashed out in anger, so looking back on it now there were a lot of things I could have said better. Namely that I didn't mention anywhere that it's okay for a character to be weak (whether emotionally, physically, etc) or be in a weak place at any point in time, because that's realistic, everyone has weak moments, and Kyle certainly does! That's another reason why I hate the "but Kyle's a strong character!" argument, because yeah, he is, but not ALWAYS. And the "but Kyle said he likes being a dirty little boy!" argument I also see a lot in these types of posts that implies that you can't bottom and also identify as a man, which is just a fucking awful way of looking at sex dynamics

[formerdinosaur]

I think what annoys me is not so much that I've seen it in this specific fandom before but just across every fandom, without fail, always presented like some kind of fucking revelation and often more about the poster strutting their specialness than any sincere burning need for Character X to stop taking it up the ass. And it's always more focused on what the "Kyle" character (ie the one who is usually bottoming in fandom) should not be doing than on what he or anybody else should be doing because it would suit their canon characterization more or whatever. It's just such a phony argument to me - the only people I've ever encountered who've made it convincingly are fans who actually make something with Character X topping. Whether I feel it's done convincingly or not, I at least believe that people who bother to make something with their bottoming/topping preferences actually care about the dynamic and don't just want back pats for going against the evil majority. And I suppose making something would include an actual essay-like post

[brimbelle]

In fandom, the best way to get what you want is to write it yourself.
A few weeks ago I saw a post on tumblr where someone asked people what they thought was overdone in the fandom, and someone else reblogged it and made a list of things (I just remember Stan/Kyle) and added "These need to stop" in the end. I think it's sad and quite confusing to think that way, it's obvious that people write/draw what they like and asking them to stop is not going to make them write/draw something they have no interest in.

[sekrit_omg]

Basically, yeah. I think that S/K is a relatively big pairing, or if it's not that big then at least there seems to be a relatively visible coherent group of people who are into it. So I think maybe it might be that people who aren't into S/K are ... well, not jealous, but somewhat overwhelmed and responding accordingly.

Ultimately I think a lot of the problems with lists of what's wrong in SP fandom result from the person not rationalizing or explaining their view. It's just, I hate S/K, it sucks, they're all Wendy haters. That's fine, you can hate S/K, but if you're going to hate it please follow up with maybe what you don't like about it? That at least gives some content for me to react to.